Overview: Safer Community Container Setting
Welcome to our Unit on Safer Community Container Setting! We have been discussing this topic throughout these courses, but in this Unit, we will speak more explicitly about the sorts of issues that can arise in communities and ways to make them feel safer. We say “safer” because no community — or life experience, really — can ever be assured to be completely safe. The goal of safer spaces is for the community to create an experience of holding — meaning that participants feel held before, during, and after the experience. Remember that holding need not be perfect, nor can it be, but it needs to feel adequate — meaning that if a person finds themselves feeling unsafe for some reason, the community can not only appear responsive, but actually be responsible to that person’s needs. This process is, of course, quite difficult, especially when participants within a community have incompatible needs or when needs are not able to be fully accommodated.
Thus, safety work is never “done,” but rather is a commitment to continually learning, listening, and leveling up our skills at community care. Organizers are often held the most accountable for safety — and rightfully so. Thus, organizers are increasingly adopting safety strategies of various levels of complexity. We will be reviewing the Code of Conduct, Guidelines for Encouraged Behavior, and Internal Procedures from the Living Games Conference as an example, which Sarah co-developed with John Stavropoulous and others. Even with such measures, members of the community may feel that safety structures fall short, as some felt during the Living Games Conference 2018 particularly around responsiveness to the needs of attendees of color. Thus, it is important to be humble, recognize that we can always learn more, be willing to challenge our implicit biases, and continually work on improving in our ability to provide holding for others.
That being said, ideally, the entire community is working together to create a shared culture where “people are more important than games.” Examples include wider anti-harassment movements that have emerged in role-playing communities and discussions around organizer safety. It is important to recognize that while safety conversations are more common within role-playing communities in recent years, they still remain controversial and, in some groups, even taboo. Ultimately, we believe that the perception of safety is an essential component of lasting supported transformation.
In this Unit, we will discuss:
- Cultures of Care
- Safety Teams
- Organizer Safety
- Anti-Harassment Movements
Click here to access the ROCKET Zoom Room.
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Required Materials:
Readings:
- Living Games Conference Safety Team. 2018. “Code of Conduct and Guidelines for Encouraged Behavior.”
- Living Games Conference Safety Team. 2018. “Internal Procedures.”
Videos:
- Stavropoulos, John. 2022. “Innovating for Growth: Designing a Culture of Safety in Games – John Stavropoulos.” Transformative Play Initiative. YouTube, February 15.